Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Neil Young is in Kingman? and Power Gold!!!!

By NEIL YOUNG/The Daily News

Published: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 1:07 AM MDT

BULLHEAD CITY — “I’ll never forget this,” said Cameron Broadcasting Vice President of Operations Craig Powers. He was referring to a recent gift from Bullhead City Mayor Jack Hakim.
Hakim, a former record company executive, and Powers, a long-time radio program director, go back many years together in Southern California. When the Cameron studios and offices in Fort Mohave were destroyed in a June 2010 fire, Powers and others lost the personal memorabilia with which they had decorated their offices. Powers estimated he lost approximately 50 “gold” record plaques. “I have a couple at home, but all the really special ones were in my office, like my Garth Brooks and Reba (McEntire) and Brooks and Dunn.”

Cameron relocated to Riverview Mall, with a state of the art facility. “(Mayor Hakim) was in my office one day and he said, ‘You know, your office is really empty in here, Craig, since you don’t have any plaques.’ He said, ‘I’m going to fix that.’ ”

Powers said he didn’t think too much about it until a month or two later, when Hakim showed up at the Cameron office with nine gold record plaques. “He said, ‘I want to give you these for your office.’ They all have his name on it and he said, ‘I want you to take my name off and put your name on.’ I said, ‘Not a chance in hell I’m going to do that, Jack. I’m going to keep your name on them.’

“It’s just about the nicest thing anybody’s ever done for me. I cried like a baby. I’m kind of getting emotional now, just thinking about it. I thought to myself, what kind of person gives you their personal gold records? He didn’t want anybody to know, he came privately to the back door of the station, and said, ‘Take these into your office.’ We brought them into my office. Then he just took off,” Powers said.

“It was great for me because I thought I’m never going to have another gold record again.” Some of them replaced the very same gold records Powers lost, including one for Paula Abdul’s 1986 album “Straight Up,” and its hit “singles.” “It just shows what a great person Jack is,” Powers said.

ED: Craig I left all my gold records (11 years in Country radio) in Yuma. But this is cool!